Very very cold pre-swim. My toes were completely numb by the time I started. In hindsight I should have brought an old pair of sneakers to wait in and them tossed them right before start.

Time trial start, which was good for spreading things out at the swim. Water was a brisk 68 degrees, but felt totally warm after standing around in ~45 degree air temps pre-swim. Took a while swimming to get loosened up from the cold.

Hard to evaluate my swim time, since it included a 1/4 mile run uphill barefoot into T1, which had to take me around 2 minutes. (Next year they should put the timing mats at the swim exit and count the run as part of T1.) So the time in minutes wasn't quite as fast as I'd hoped for, but I finished first in the swim of the Aqua Velo division, and 19th overall of all swimmers (out of 442 total), so I can be happy with that.

Eric Shanteau was there to do the swim leg of a relay, which was kind of cool if you are a swimming geek like me. Not surprisingly he won the swim leg at 20:40. More surprising was that the 2nd place swimmer was only 4 seconds behind, and was a woman who did the whole triathlon. Beast!

So a pretty slow transition time, but I had to take the wetsuit off, and given the cold I wanted to take some extra time to dry off and make sure I was warm for the bike. Put on a cycling jersey and some arm warmers, which was more difficult than expected even after I had dried off.

I was actually worried my T1 time would be even slower, so I was actually ok with this.

Was really excited about this course as it is my "home turf" on the roads I regularly ride on. Unfortunately my bike let me down on race day.

I had taken my bike in to the LBS last week to get the bottom bracket fixed (it was making a clicking noise). Well apparently the LBS did a bunch of stuff because nothing on my bike was where I left it (e.g. seat height, derailer). I noticed on my pre-race test ride that the chain was rubbing against the front derailer when I was in the two largest rings in the back. So at bike racking, I asked one of the mechanics to take a look. Big mistake I guess. He made some adjustments that made it rub a bit less, but didn't seem to make much difference. I rode it around the parking lot and it seemed to shift ok.

So I pull out of T1 and on my first shift to the big front ring my chain drops. No biggie, it dropped to the outside I shift to small and pull it back on. This continues to happen about 8-10 times over the next 30 miles. Annoying that I have to slow down to fix but not the end of the world. Then around mile 30 the chain drops to the inside and gets all tangled and bent. Crap. I get off the bike and spend about 5 minutes trying to fix it, getting my hands disgusting in the process.

I finally get it back on, but it is clear something is now very wrong with the bike. The chain "hitches" on the gears every 4 or 5 pedal strokes and is not shifting cleanly at all. I proceed to drop the chain to the inside two more times and have to get off the bike to fix each time. It is now obvious that every time I shift the front ring in either direction the chain is dropping. It also drops if I get out of the middle 4-5 gears on the back ring.

So around mile 40 I resign myself to basically riding a single-speed the rest of the race. Ugh - this is not the best course to try that. Cranking up those big hills on 50/15 was just brutal. I kept passing people hammering up hills and then they would pass me going down because I spin out at 23 mph.

Considered dropping out but glad I toughed it out and avoided a DNF.

There were few spots on the 2nd lap where car backups on roads without a shoulder made me slow down. Frustrating but not sure what race management could have really done about that.

Also was very windy out there - as windy as I have seen it on this roads. Overall times looked slow even for the leaders.

Have a bike that works

No run - aqua velo

Great event. Well organized, tons of volunteers handing out drinks. Time trial start was cool. Key benefit of Aqua Velo was ability to get a post-race massage without waiting.

Oh, and Chipotle as sponsor = best post-race meal ever. Those burritos were just awesome after a long day.